That dude outside

Am I normal? Is what I do, want, think, believe normal? Some of us spend time comparing ourselves to others to see if we are “normal” in whatever way concerns us. In work, in child-rearing, in dressing, in talking, you name it. We think that others know what normal is, or just are normal and we might not be. But here is the thing that really surprised me about normal when I read about it for my dissertation – it is constructed by everyone around us, including us. We have such a hard time finding “normal” because it is constantly being defined and redefined around us and by us.

A friend of mine was visiting us last week and recalled when I’d first met her (we were both still pregnant) and told her I was looking for a counselor locally who could deal with postpartum depression because I thought I was at higher risk for it. She said something about the exchange like “you just acted so matter-of-fact about it and I thought, wow, she’s this totally normal woman and just brought up counseling like it was nothing strange. I can do that, too.” It reminded me of something I think is related to academic culture – a person can redefine normal by acting as if what they are doing is normal.

The few talks I’ve given about my research, I’ve spent the talk sitting down in front of the audience. I chose to do this, first, because it is not what “normally” happens at an academic talk. It is one of those little rules that everyone learns by watching and no one ever has to be told by their advisor “you stand up when you give a science talk.” It happens at journal clubs, conferences and class presentations. Humans are good at picking up on this type of, everyone-else-is-doing-it, norms. When someone breaks this rule, people use humor, ridicule, or gossip to comment on it to others and reinforce that it was a break from what is supposed to happen. “What was X thinking, sitting down during journal club? How rude/strange/flippant/naïve.”

But I think there is a power to flipping the situation around, that only a few people ever use, but can change how the action is perceived. If the person engaged in the “deviant” behavior acts as if it is normal, instead of apologizing or being embarrassed, she can start to shake up the process. Suddenly, if X comes out journal club and says to the group “I sit because I concentrate better that way and I think it makes my journal club presentations better – isn’t that the goal?” maybe the group starts to rethink the point of the standing up “rule.” The real power to redefine (or challenge) the concept of sitting as normal, though, happens if X makes that statement in a tone of voice that is completely unapologetic, maybe even slightly mystified, the way you might defend a normal behavior to someone who doesn’t understand your culture. “Um, of course I picked up that piece of litter, that’s what we DO here.” Duh. If you can hold that line, other people start to waiver a bit.

So I’m saying there is a bit of a game of “who blinks first” going on. If you can hold your line, and act as if what you’ve just done is normal (whether or not you believe it), others start to think about what you’ve done normal. Or at least more normal than before, if you’ve broken some norm of behavior within your group. Whether you are a pregnant woman telling a new acquaintance that you are looking for a therapist and that you’ve been depressed in the past, or a science instructor who announces to the class that you keep having problems working with log-normal plots, if you can say it matter-of-factly and act as if it is okay, it starts to become ok. We are all involved in defining, and redefining normal, in the groups we are part of. This is a powerful role that can help us change all sorts of things around us.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating doing this with sexually harassing your students, or spitting into someone else’s dinner plate. And there is an extreme example in front of me as I write this. A guy who has been talking to himself – and not apologetically, or embarrassed when someone looks at him – and after speaking with the café manager, seems to be collecting the white pebbles out of the mostly grey gravel in out in front. This guy is not going by many norms shared by those around him, for whatever reason. And at some point, he may get shooed away, or arrested, if his non-normal behavior keeps going. There is a point at which you can act as normal as you want about your behavior but you’re going to get in trouble for it.